I'm a Stephen King fan, I'll admit it freely. For a fun read, and for my money, there are few authors that can spin a perfectly mindless yarn while being entertaining, keeping me on the edge, and also write pretty well all at the same time. (My Scottish friends out there might be pleased to note that I've recently added Ian Rankin to that list.) I like to mix up my reading: something non-fiction, then something fiction; something heavy, then something light. Keeps the palate cleansed so to speak.
Also, I've been collecting Stephen King original hardcovers for, oh, about fifteen years now, ever since a buddy of mine in college showed me his collection of Stephen King original hardcovers, and I totally got caught up in my own envy. (I mean, to a book nerd like me, that was freakin' cool.) I'm not ridiculously hard-core about it. I don't go out and find the original hardcovers of books that I've missed (although I would love an original copy of It one of these days, just because I loved that book as kid). I have most everything he's written from the early 90's on. Before that, I had paperbacks that I don't own anymore. But these days, if it comes out, I generally buy it in hardback right away.
So when I got an email from Amazon a little while ago telling me that they were selling Steve's new one for $9 (down from a cover price of $35) I pre-ordered in a hurry. It came in the mail yesterday.
Now, two things I noticed before I even read it. Three things really. Well, four.
First of all, the cover is stunning. There is a blurb on the Amazon page for this book explaining all of the graphic art and CGI that went into it, but really, outstanding.
Second, the plot. Here it is from the publisher in a nutshell:
On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener's hand is severed as "the dome" comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when -- or if -- it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens -- town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician's assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing -- even murder -- to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn't just short. It's running out.
Anything about that strike you as familiar? Say, maybe, the 2007 Simpsons Movie? (If you haven't seen it, trust me, it's similar. The town of Springfield gets encapsulated by a huge dome, although for completely comedic reasons, and of course Homer & Co. have to save the day once Marge pulls Homer's head out of his ass. Sort of like a long episode, but with a dome, over a city, that the occupants of which were under. Sound familiar?)
Now, I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this similarity, the blogosphere must be abuzzin', but I got to wondering what could Steve possibly be thinking? In the back of the book, he's got one of his usual Author's Notes (addressed to me, or "Constant Reader" as he likes to call me) where he tells me that he actually started this story in 1976 and put it away because it was too challenging. "I had this idea first," he's clearly saying, preemptively staving off the naysayers among us. Then he clearly admits to starting it over again back in 2007. Really Steve? In 2007? I wonder what could have possibly prompted you to tackle this subject again.
Now, I've often speculated about how it must feel to an author to find one of his (or her) ideas used elsewhere, completely innocently, no plagiarism involved. Certainly it's possible for two people to come up with the same idea independently. I expounded upon it a little during my review of Quietus a few years ago. I, myself, had that problem earlier this year. Back in the summer of '08 (way back in the dark ages) I started work on a novel about a guy who could tell if people were lying to him and how he used that gift and how it used him, etcetera. Then, this fall, the Fox Broadcasting Company premiered a TV show about a guy who can tell if people are lying. (Bugger!) Oh well. I had pretty much run into a brick wall with it anyway, but now I'm really done. Maybe ten years from now I might revisit, but at the moment it would be way too soon, too obvious a connection to pop culture. Nobody would believe that I'd thought of it all on my own, even if I did put in an Author's Note explaining that I had the idea first, all the way back in 2008.
My point? Steve, you should have let some time pass before you tried to publish this one. I realize you're getting older and want to get a few more books written before your time runs out, but maybe this one should have stayed on the shelf a few more years until the memory of The Simpsons movie has faded. Trust me, you and Matt Groenig have a lot of the same readers. And at $527 million world-wide gross, more than just a few people saw that little flick.
Third: he's done this before, written a book with an obvious pop-culture inspiration. Duma Key, his last one (that I read, anyway) was about a guy who painted things that came true. Like in Heroes, that TV show that nobody's really watching any more. I stood up for you then, Steve. I'm not doing it again.
Fourth: the length. Have you seen this book? It's freaking huge. It's the biggest King book on my shelf. I have to go back to Insomnia before I find one that's even close. We're talking something along The Stand proportions. 1072 pages. I was initially quite excited. I like it when Steve goes all epic-proportions on us. Those are usually the most fun to read. I mean, seriously, have you read The Stand? Awesome book. So yeah, I was stoked.
Until I opened the book, that is.
Did you ever have to write a ten-page report for school and you increased the font to 13-point and widened the margins to 1.5" just to get your sparse text to spill onto that 10th page? (Our teachers weren't fooled, were they? But they couldn't say much because they hadn't specified layout metrics.) Yeah, this feels the same. The font is almost so big that I wondered if I got one of the "large print" books for people with poor eyesight. The margins are wide enough to draw very complex flip-book style animations in it and have room left for notes about the economy or anything else that comes to mind. The paper is obnoxiously thick, almost as if the publishers wanted the book to appear thicker than it really was. By comparison, David Foster Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest, has nearly the same number of pages, is about a quarter-inch thinner, and just glancing at how small the print is and how many lines he gets on a page (43 lines per page compared to Steve's 35 lines) and a font size that probably gets about 25% more words per line, I'm guessing he's got about twice as many actual words in his 1076 pages.
This is not Steve's fault, of course. The publishers can't charge $35 per book for an inch-thick volume. So they padded it with extra paper (relatively cheap) and jacked up the price. I got my copy for nine bucks, so what am I complaining about? The sucker's heavy. That's all. I'm anxious to read that thing (after November of course) but I think I might get carpal tunnel just trying to hold it up.
I've rambled on long enough. Need to get back to my own writing. If/when I read it, I'll come back and tell you if I thought it was worth the $9. The last one was. The one before that wasn't.











